Archive for Deborah Lipp

Tailgunner Rudy

March 22, 2006 / / One comment

Per Shakespeare’s Sister, the news that Rudy Giuliani is considered a front-runner for the Republican 2008 Presidential nomination.

Rudy is a great man when he has great things to do. But it’s like he has ADD. The minute Great Things™ aren’t attracting his attention, he goes after whatever’s nearest.

Probably the best thing he ever did was “Don’t Block the Box” (but then, the best thing Ed Koch ever did was “Don’t Even Think About Parking Here!” — New Yorkers take our traffic problems seriously). Rudy cleaned up New York in a big way, but then when the big work was done, he started going after street vendors (whom We the NY People love) and street artists, and people who parody him, and Mark Green. Why? Just ’cause. He didn’t have anything better to do.

And when he’d alienated everyone who ever looked cross-eyed at him he didn’t just cheat on his wife, he did so publically, humiliating her to the nth degree by finally declaring his engagement to his mistress in a press conference, which is how his wife found out.

Then 9/11 happened and while America longed for a hero that failed to emerge from Washington, Giuliani behaved in a truly heroic fashion, compassionate, kind, brave, and tireless. He was everywhere with everyone. And although this is not well known, he very nearly died; he was in #7 just minutes before it collapsed.

He declined to run for mayor again in order to run for Senate (where he’d have surely beaten Hillary), then withdrew from that race because of his prostate cancer.

He could have left his mayoralty with dignity. Instead he tried to get the law in New York changed retroactively, for no other reason than to take a petty swipe at longtime enemy Mark Green. He left a bad taste in our mouths with that one, and proved that though he is capable of greatness when the moment demands it, in repose he is petty, vindictive, and dishonest.

WWKD

March 22, 2006 / / 13 comments

What Would Kali Do?

I was thinking I should start a thing. It would be like the fortune cookie “in bed” thing, except in this case, the word to always include is “devour.”

    What Would Kali Do about that homeless guy over there?
    Embrace him in the love of her infinite grace. Then devour him.

    What Would Kali Do about my annoying co-worker?
    See him in the perspective of the passage of vast yugas, knowing that all things pass in time. Then devour him.

    What Would Kali Do about George W. Bush?
    Devour him.

This is very convenient, because you always know what Kali would do. Whereas, I think the WWJD people leave a lot of room for disagreement. Jesus might be turning the other cheek, he might be picking up the sword, he might be speaking in the parable. Very confusing. Kali, on the other hand, be devouring. No. Matter. What.

Also, it’s comforting to know that no matter how much I lose my temper, or feel I’ve handled things badly, well, at least I haven’t devoured human heads today. (Just for today.)

So that’s it. WWKD. I’m thinking of having bracelets made.

Dancing Naked to the Gods

March 21, 2006 / / 7 comments

Jason has a fab post about “overweight Druid priestesses.”

Twenty-five years ago, when I first became a part of the Pagan community, we Pagans were objects of fear and ignorance. We were Satanists, we were evil, we were dangerously crazy. Now, we are mostly the objects of snark and derision.

This is progress. Some Pagans (especially teens) would rather be feared than mocked, but mockery is never going to destroy your life, or deprive you of a job, a home, or the custody of your child. Only fear does that. The fear still exists, especially in the rabid Right, at least when they have a moment between being afraid of gays and being afraid of women who have sex, but it is receding in most of the culture.

Even the far Right often resorts more to mockery than to fear-mongering, in regard to Pagans. Those silly Pagans, they say, with their silly little cutie-pie rituals; only we have a real religion. Wasn’t that the whole point of that Wife Swap episode—silly misguided Pagans learning from the real thing? It’s probably also why the “religious” right is so eager to tie us to Harry Potter. I doubt they think we really have unicorns and centaurs and such on our side; they just want to make us appear more involved in fantasy than reality.

And really, I’m okay with that as an interim step. I’m even okay with that as the whole package. I never got into Witchcraft to look cool to my peers. In fact, when I first got into it, I never expected to tell my peers, although that changed muchly.

Pagans I know used to get furious every time Laurie Cabot appeared on TV. ‘We don’t want people to think we look like that!’ they’d say, all aghast at the big hair and the scary makeup and the black polyester robes. My response was always that all they’d remember is that they saw a Witch on TV and she was a person not a monster. Maybe they laughed at her, and maybe that reinforced their understanding that there was nothing scary there. A year later, they wouldn’t remember what she wore, only the general impression that it was all no big deal.

I was right, I think. Oddballs on TV make people smile, and now we are mocked more, and persecuted less. So if the world wants to think I’m a silly flaky dingbat, that’s a small price to pay if we can all keep our kids and jobs and homes.

Here’s that dream I promised you

March 21, 2006 / / 4 comments

I posted this on Saturday, and it got wiped when I (okay, not me, Cranky) restored the site from a backup. It is a very cool dream and fascinates me, so here it is again, for posterity.

I am in my house. Although I never see this house from the outside during the course of the dream, I know that it is a tall Victorian, very Psycho. I am in my bedroom in the attic (sloped ceilings and such).

My friends are using my basement temple to perform an initiation. I am waiting upstairs in the bedroom for them to finish.

Suddenly I find that Alex Sanders is in bed with me. We are waiting together. Then he tries to seduce me. At first he is crude and grabby and I reject him twice. The third time he is more seductive and gentle and I respond. We begin to make love. I can hear the initiation going on downstairs. While we make love, I quietly recite some of the words of the ceremony along with the Priestess. I know Alex knows these words as well.

Then the lights go on and the initiation is going on in the bedroom. The ritual circle surrounds the bed and we have a major “oops, excuse our naked goodness” moment.

Interpretations so far include (a) I’m horny, and (b) the dream was an initiation. ‘Course, could be both.

Monday Movie Review: The Last Picture Show

March 20, 2006 / / Comments Off on Monday Movie Review: The Last Picture Show

The Last Picture Show (1971) 9/10
In the bleak Texas town of Anarene, in 1952, a group of high school seniors (Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd) face adulthood as they observe the compromises and sorrows of the adults around them.

You can look at The Last Picture Show and see the impossibility of desire. No one is happy for long. Love is unfulfilled. Sex is unsatisfying. Happiness is always a memory, and never exists in the present moment. But that doesn’t really tell the story. What tells the story is that desire is grabbed at, happiness is chased after, dissatisfaction is rejected with cold fury.

When The Last Picture Show ends, you wonder how well you know the people of Anarene. Some you think you know well: Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), who is kind and wistful and stern, a kind of town mentor; Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), whose loneliness has reduced her to a brittle and delicate condition, but who is still able to reach out with grace and longing. Others are more opaque; Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) is wistful and observant, and tries to be a good person. But he is fundamentally passive, acted upon rather than acting, both the love he receives and the grief he endures happen while he just watches.

Jacy (Cybill Shepherd) is perhaps the most interesting, and the most opaque. The “only pretty girl” in high school, she is sure, absolutely sure, that she should be able to parlay her beauty into a good life. She just doesn’t know how. Her mother, Lois (Ellen Burstyn), assures her she should set aside love and lust in order to gain a good husband from a wealthy family. But then again, Lois isn’t that sure; that’s what she did, and she’s not happy.

There are moments of intense passion in The Last Picture Show, but none of them are during the frequent sex scenes. The sex is perfunctory, flat. Women clench their eyes shut or say “hurry up.” Men grab and thrust without art, without preliminaries. Clothes are taken off as matter-of-factly as brushing your teeth. The passion is in a first kiss, a memory, a greeting, a fight; moments come upon unawares. Sonny’s friendship with mute and “simple” Billy is passionate; when Sonny hurts Billy, his apology is more deeply felt than almost anything else he says or does in the movie.

The Last Picture Show has the honesty and emptiness of a snapshot. Here I am, looking off into the distance I’ll never reach.

I’m back

March 20, 2006 / / Comments Off on I’m back

Cranky Cronos fixed whatever was broken yesterday. Unfortunately, I lost what I posted over the weekend, including my weird dream about having sex with Alex Sanders. Maybe I’ll type that one up again.

Site Stuff

March 17, 2006 / / 3 comments

I had to add the word “blog” to my moderated word list (along with viagra, cialis, and texas holdem). There’s a new kind of blogger spam, not nearly as entertaining as some, that generates fake bland comments. They generally say things like “Great blog! I agree!” Or “Keep up the good work. Love the blog!” The purpose is to embed their site link (attached to the username) to the comments.

So if you mention your blog, or indeed if you link to blogspot, you’ll be briefly held in moderation. Sorry about that.

By the way, I know I’m getting a lot of new readers lately, so if that’s you and you’re not familiar with my work, please check out my parent site. /commercial message

I didn’t know the GLBT community wanted to wipe out the Irish

March 17, 2006 / / 5 comments

I heard this on the radio this morning while I was getting dressed (registration required for link).

John Dunleavy, the parade chairman, touched off a new controversy by comparing Irish gay activists to neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. In an interview yesterday in The Irish Times, Mr. Dunleavy was quoted as saying, “If an Israeli group wants to march in New York, do you allow neo-Nazis into their parade? If African-Americans are marching in Harlem, do they have to let the Ku Klux Klan into their parade?”

To understand how mad this made me, understand that I heard it, then got dressed, made coffee, drove to work, drank more coffee, and then was still mad enough to look it up to post it.

Because obviously, Irish gays and lesbians in an Irish parade are just like the KKK in an African-American parade. They have the same murderous intent, the same hatred, the same violent criminal history.

/sarcasm

Friday Kittenblogging: Undercover

March 17, 2006 / / 3 comments

Mingo likes to get under the covers. At a guess, one cat out of five will stick his nose under a blanket and tunnel his way in. The other four will run like mad if you even suggest such a thing.

Mingo is an undercover cat.
Under cover

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My Copyright, My Self

March 16, 2006 / / 3 comments

I found a website that had an article I’d written years ago. It had been posted without permission or copyright notice. (No link or names; I’m not writing this to point fingers or be bitchy.)

On this site, I found quite a few articles, some attributed, some not, some with permission, some not. There were songs and poems and rituals, some without any author noted. As it happens, I knew who’d written about half of what I saw posted as “anonymous.”

This was common practice, back in the old days. Take everything you can get your hands on, and throw it up there. If you typed it yourself, clearly it’s yours. If you don’t know who wrote it, clearly it’s anonymous. It was exceptionally common among Pagans, but it’s also all over fansites, and probably everywhere else.

The old days are over.

I’m writing this, not to berate one web publisher (although I didn’t like his response, which I’ll detail shortly) but to talk about this as an issue. I’m a writer. It’s who I am, it’s what I do. It’s my bread and butter. It’s my art form. It’s my reputation. Most of what I write is free of charge. You can read this blog for free. The extensive writing I did in Pagan ‘zines in the 80s and early 90s was for free. Most Pagan ‘zines, even today, pay very little if at all. So what I get out of it is that article, attached to my name. That’s the part that’s mine.

» Read more..

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